


To Find Again

by cat_77



Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: High Warlock of Brooklyn Magnus Bane, M/M, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Season/Series 03 Spoilers, Serious Injuries, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 11:11:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16533485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: The spell was supposed to heal him.  It did that and more.





	To Find Again

**Author's Note:**

> For the “loss of identity” entry at hc_bingo. Also, Magnus is High Warlock because he should be.
> 
> * * *

“Magnus, come quick! It’s Alec!” If any words were going to jumpstart his heart, it would be those. Mix in the panicked tone and the way Jace was damned near hyperventilating across the line, and he would admit to a fair deal of worry. The groan of pain at the end did not help matters in the least

Whatever he had imagined was not enough.

He let the words wash over him in a haze as he approached the crumpled form. Thrown from a building. Rebar. Broken bones. Likely as much internal as external bleeding. Before his eyes could even focus through the tears, he knew that he was not going to be enough. “Call Catarina,” he ordered as he tossed his phone behind him. Someone, possibly Isabelle, caught it and he could hear her sobs, forced them to the background, as he took to the task at hand.

That task was to pour every drop of healing energy he had in him into his lover. They were still in the alleyway, the b-, Alexander, too fragile to move just yet. He knelt in warmth, fine fabrics serving as a sponge to what he hoped was only blood. He was vaguely aware of a whoosh of a portal, a familiar magic dancing across his own. Catarina crouched next to him with nary a word, simply took one of his hands in her own and started pouring her energy out like rain.

There was a shake and a shiver and he felt something along the edge of his senses, tried to push that too away to concentrate, but it was increasingly hard to do as there was assault after assault and Jace shouting to stay back, that there was too many of them, that they couldn’t hold them all off as it would take too long for reinforcements to arrive.

“They are the reinforcements,” Catarina hissed as though he were particularly dense. Maybe he was, it wasn’t like Magnus was paying attention to much aside from gathering every ounce, every drop of potential healing he could muster, and hoping it was enough. “They are here to help.”

That, of all things, made him look away from the far too pale form. He glanced upwards to find an even dozen, maybe more, warlocks stride forward. “Take what you need,” one directed even as another asked, “Is there anyplace we should concentrate on first?” If it was a rainstorm before, it was waterfall in a cyclone now. So much energy, so much more than he could have imagined, all directed at healing. Not wards, not defense, just pure, unadulterated healing.

Wounds sewed and sealed shut before his eyes. Bones straightened and became solid once more. Blood seeped upwards and the pale became a little more hopeful. A gargled gasp for breath sounded like the sweetest symphony to his ears.

“Why?” Jace asked when the maelstrom began to fade. He had been crumpled on the ground himself, his parabatai’s pain his own, but he stood now on unsteady feet. “Not that I’m, we’re, not grateful, but...”

“You mean aside from our High Warlock needing assistance to save the man he loves?” a woman with purple hair, Marjorie maybe, asked. She was out of breath but smiled all the same.

“Do you have any idea how many times this little brat has stood up for us?” a massive man who preferred to go by the name Bruno added. Magnus wasn’t sure if he meant Alexander or himself, either were possible.

Alahndra, who rarely came out of hiding save for official events scoffed. “The last time I saw him, he bodily threw himself in front of a warlock child to protect her with no heed for his own safety. If that doesn’t warrant gratitude, what does?”

A new voice chimed in. Quiet. Pensive. Something he had never heard from Isabelle in the past. “Will he be okay?”

Magnus plopped backwards with little grace, much to the amusement of his oldest colleagues. “The spell we used will take time to take hold completely, but it should return him to his original, unharmed state, or as close to it as we can manage,” he confirmed. “With that, his runes, and time, we will see.”

She sighed in relief and slouched against the nearest solid surface. “Are you a relation?” Alahndra asked, curious. Her spiky skin rippled as she cocked her head to the side.

“He’s my brother,” Isabelle confirmed. “My stubborn, pigheaded, all too galant brother that probably just saved my life. Again.”

“He is a good man. Good blood to have in your family,” the warlock told her. A pause, then, “Have you been injured as well?”

Magnus hadn’t even bothered to check the others yet, and winced at the omission. Not that he had much energy left to do anything about it, but he could assess and try if nothing else. The fact that the neighborhood recluse had noticed said something though.

He turned to see Isabelle shake her head. “Minor only, thanks to him. This should help,” she insisted. She pulled her stele out and would have waved it over her healing runes had her hand not shaken so much she nearly dropped the damned thing. Clary was at her side in an instant though, placed her own hand over hers, and guided her to what she needed.

“And the angel-blooded?” Marcus asked. He had narrowly escaped the first massacre, not yet through the doors when the Soul Sword was activated, but there was a distinct lack of anger or derision to his tone. Apparently the two had redeemed themselves when they slaughtered the slaughterer.

“Clary got thrown into a wall,” Jace tattled. He then wrote off the fact that he was visibly dripping blood and added, “I’m his parabatai, um, like a shield brother. What he feels, I feel. Which means I know how much all of you just did for him. Thank you. I... just, thank you.”

Marcus nodded, accepting the gratitude for what it was. “Do you need assistance transporting him home?” 

Now it was Bruno’s turn to scoff. “I doubt our High Warlock has the juice to even create a portal right now; of course they are going to need help.” Magnus would have objected, but he wasn’t wrong. Besides, one formed right behind him and he truly could not say who made it.

Thanks given, warlocks sent home to rest and Nephilim sent home to do the same only to ignore that and follow him to the loft, he eventually managed to get Alexander laid out on the bed and stripped down to a pair of pajama pants before he carefully tucked the covers around him. The girls scrubbed themselves clean and passed out in the guest room, and Jace stayed sullenly on the couch as if he were going to defend them all from whatever might break through the strongest wards in the city and not pass out while doing so.

He knew that he needed to sleep. He had nearly depleted his magic in his rush to stabilize his love before the reinforcements came and the only way to restore it was pure and simple rest. Well, only sensible way. There were a few shady methods but, with the direct threat currently contained, he did not feel the need to resort to those quite yet. That wasn’t to say he wasn’t willing to if needed and hadn’t already checked to make sure he had the supplies should they be necessary.

For now he gently laid down on the far side of the bed, careful not to jostle or touch or aggravate or anything like that, and watched the steady rise and fall of a rune and blanket covered chest, and tried really had not to think about how he almost lost the chance of ever seeing such a sight again.

He must have drifted as somewhere between counting Isabelle’s soft snores and Jace’s louder ones, the barest hints of dawn began to peek through the windows. He debated closing the curtains to make sure no one else woke, but pushed that aside when he figured out just why he woke in the first place: Alexander was in distress. 

He was still breathing and his heart still beat loud and clear through the spell he had cast to listen for just a thing, but he twitched, threw his head to the side, let out a barely audible moan. Magnus soothed him the best he could and watched as some of the thin lines of tension around his eyes and lips began to smooth, only to constrict again. The covers had been thrown slightly to the side and he pulled them back further to check on the wounds and verify they were healing correctly, that the magic had done its job.

Everything looked as it should. The worst of the damage had been reduced to angry deep red jagged lines, but the remainder was nothing more than bruising or had already faded completely. He cupped his palm against the tense cheek and asked, “Alexander, darling, what’s wrong?”

The Nephilim opened his eyes wide and shot upright despite his lingering wounds, a nearly silent scream emitted before wings, black, fluffy, feathery wings, ripped forth from his shoulder blades and spread out in glorious beauty. For about a three count before he passed out and collapsed backwards right onto his new appendages, dead to the world once more.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting that as a response,” he admitted to the once again silent room. A quick check verified that the others had miraculously slept through the whole thing, or possibly woke and passed back out just like his parabatai in Jace’s case. He then promptly called Catarina and decidedly did not panic.

After she chided him for being awake - not for waking her, just that he himself was not resting - he explained precisely why he was conscious. She too was still not strong enough to create a portal to come over, but offered to do so under more mundane methods if needed. He declined and together they talked through the possible scenarios instead.

She confirmed that she had not added anything to the healing spell nor had she felt anyone else involved alter it either. There had been no hint of ill intent, no thread of anyone wanting to force a warlock mark onto Alec so that he could be hunted the way their kind had by his for so long. As those who assisted had verified earlier, Alexander Lightwood was a respected name in the warlock community, and for his own contributions far more than even his ties to Magnus. If someone had tried to harm him, they would be ostracized at best and possibly punished without higher approval at worst.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Magnus sighed. He gave in to the urge to run his fingers through some of the feathers, to prove to himself that they really were there and not just a figment of his imagination. If the man they were attached to just happened to relax into the mattress a little bit more every time he did so, it was just a remarkable coincidence.

“Unless...” Catarina started, but cut herself off. He could hear her rummage through what sounded like books or at least papers of some kind and wanted to give her time to do so but his curiosity was just too great. 

“Unless what?” he prompted after what he felt was a reasonable amount of time but was probably less than a full minute.

“Unless the old wives’ tale about Nephilim is actually true,” she mused, all other movement coming to a halt.

“No...” he protested even as the evidence was right in front of him.

Catarina decided to cut to the chase and bluntly asked, “Yes or no, does the being with the blood of an angel in him currently have angel-like wings?”

“Not exactly angel-like per se, darker like a raven’s, really,” he deflected.

“So he fully coordinates, whatever,” Catarina sighed and he could nearly hear the eye roll that accompanied it. “Does he have wings? Are said wings attached at roughly the shoulder blade area?”

Magnus hung his head. “Yes,” he reluctantly answered. Then, because they knew each other far too well, he added, “Yes to both.”

“Do said wings make him look like the drawings of the original descendants of the angels as seen in the codex?” she asked next, which gave him pause.

“Actually quite a lot, yes,” he admitted.

There was a sound of a heavy tome, likely her own copy of the codex, being thudded down onto a tabletop. It was shortly followed by, “Okay, so one of two things are likely at this point. Either the combined power of so many warlocks completing a spell to make him whole again somehow triggered a wholeness far further back in his ancestry, or he originally had them. I have treated that man shirtless enough times, where even his rune energy was barely perceptible, and never saw anything to hint at this. So-”

“I have,” he blurted, cutting her off. She damned near squawked in a way that she would deny to her dying days, so he tried to explain what he himself was still trying to piece together. “Thin scars, faded to nearly nothing. Old. Old enough that he claimed not to remember the injury, yet still... His back will hurt after too many long hours and I will massage it - not like that, not every time at least - and there is always an extra almost tension held there. As if...”

“He’s a Lightwood,” Catarina said, stating the obvious. He let her continue to see where she would run with it. “One of the oldest and likely purest bloodlines of the Shadowhunters. Also one of the most vicious against warlocks and his own parents were Circle members.”

“You don’t think... to their own children?” Magnus asked, aghast. He turned to look at the slumbering form beside him, mind reeling with the possibility that Nephilim would deform their own kind just to further separate them from the Downworlders. 

Only that form was no longer slumbering. Wide eyes met his own. Pensive. Terrified. “It’s... it’s a simple ritual, at least when done young enough. Tw-two slices, a chant of suppression, a rune that fades over time.” He swallowed heavily but ignored the water Magnus summoned for him. “I saw Max’s after he was born. I wasn’t supposed to, but I was curious. I never told... By the time he came home and I had a break from lessons, they were gone.”

“To a baby?” Catarina asked what Magnus himself could not, voice full of the pain and horror reflected in his own mind. “The risk of infection, of so many things going wrong is so high, and for what?”

It was Magnus that managed to ask, “Why?” There was so much emotion to such a simple word, so many more questions he couldn’t give voice to just yet.

Alec pushed himself upright in bed, slouched forward with a rounded back, wings jittering before they settled. “The bloodlines had grown weak over the centuries. Not everyone had them and, of those who did, very few were all white and pure like the pictures and stories. Rumors circulated, Nephilim laying with Downworlders, a sign of cursed blood, all of that. Mix in that some couldn’t even use them so they were a hindrance when fighting and the whole classism aspect of it all, and this was the solution. I didn’t even know about any of this for certain until my father pulled me aside before the wedding. He felt I should warn Lydia, assure her it could be fixed.”

“Isabelle? Biscuit? Jace?” Magnus managed.

This time Alexander accepted the water before he spoke, though it might have been a stalling tactic. “The ritual is quick, you don’t really remember anything about it,” he swore. “I-I don’t know about Clary, but I’m pretty sure Izzy had the same thing done. I remember mom saying to use the same place for Max, so...” He straightened his back slightly, eyes aflame when he said, “Jace only knew Valentine in disguise as his father.”

“There was no ritual,” Jace confirmed from the doorway. Magnus should have known he would have sensed something was going on through the bond. The blond hung his head for the briefest of moments before he looked up defiantly. “I was five. He wanted to see if they were usable as an advantage but I kept falling, getting them caught in branches. My grandmother admitted all Herondale’s have them, and few go through the full ritual, most suppress them with a glamour or redrawing the rune. She wanted to know how I had learned to do so without help.”

“Can we resurrect Valentine so that we can kill him again?” Catarina asked, reminding them all that she was still on the line.

“I think Clary has a rune for that,” Jace chuckled without humor. He turned his gaze to Alec, curiosity, wonder, and maybe a tiny flicker of regret in his eyes. “What do they feel like? I remember a weight, the way I’d lose my balance if I turned to quickly without...”

“Heavy,” his parabatai replied, and Magnus had the feeling he was speaking both physically and metaphorically. He had hugged his knees close to his chest and dug his chin in atop them. 

Magnus gave into the urge and, after a few false starts, managed to find a way to wrap his arms around him and pull him close. “Can we have a moment?” he asked the air around him. He half heard Catarina sign off with a promise to look into the matter some more and waited for the click of the door to signal Jace’s departure. “Alexander? I need you to speak to me, to tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t even know what I’m thinking,” his lover admitted. “This is... this is too much. If the Angel had wanted us to have these, he wouldn’t have taken them away. Outright from some, let others... If th-, if the Clave finds out? What if they accuse the warlocks of doing this to me? What if they use it as a reason to punish you, to keep us apart? To banish me for being, for being tainted by...”

“Alexander, you know I would never let them do something like that,” Magnus promised, for that’s precisely what it was. He had been careful through the centuries and let very few see the true extent of his powers. He would use them, use every last drop of his energy, if it meant keeping the man before him close to him and safe from harm.

There were tears on his shirt and a telling sniff before he heard, “They might not even be usable. They might solely get in the way. I mean, I was fine without them before, maybe it’d be better if they went away again.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself, uncertainty and fear colored his tone, two things Magnus could never stand hearing from him if there was anything he could do to prevent them.

“Look up,” he bade. There were no words he could find that could express the matter as clearly as Alec, as his instinct alone, was currently doing. He pulled back ever so slightly, just enough to allow the tousled dark head to raise and realize that they were surrounded by a canopy of feathers. The raven-like wings were spread wide, up and over them both, the tips resting gently against Magnus’ back, holding onto him as much as he held onto the man in his arms.

“I think they like you,” Alec huffed, but now there was an underlying thread of wonder to his words.

“I’m a likable guy,” Magnus agreed amiably enough. It earned him the slightest of upturned lips and so he considered it a win. He hated to destroy that win, but felt the need to ask, “So, what do you want to do? I will support any decision, but do ask that you wait a short while to fully heal and fully think this through.”

Alec sighed and, as he had predicted, most of the gleam in his eyes had faded. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “This is new. This is unexpected. I know either one of us could argue that this is who I really am, what I’m really supposed to be, but... I was raised to believe you need to fit in. We work as one to defeat the demons and differences only cause dissensions in the ranks. I’ve already caused enough of that lately.” He hung his head at the last of that, self-depreciating and self-aware in equal measures.

“But?” Magnus prompted, knowing there was more.

“What if, instead of becoming who I was supposed to be, who I would have been if my parents hadn’t decided to go through with the ritual, I lose even more of myself?” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, knuckles only slightly blue from their previously broken state. “I just started to get a handle on myself, feel comfortable in being me. What if this takes that all away?” He looked up again shrewdly and pointed out, “You’re being suspiciously quiet about all of this.”

Magnus did not let him go and pointedly refused to press back against the feathers for fear of how that may be interpreted. Instead, he said, “It is not my decision to make, but know this: I love you. All of you. Whatever part of you that you are willing to share with me. Wings or no wings, runes or no runes. You are beautiful to me no matter what. I told you once that I fall in love with someone’s soul, and that still holds true. Alexander Lightwood, your soul is everything to me and I will support you, no matter what that soul decides.”

“I’ll take the time,” Alec promised. He bit his lip and Magnus knew there would be an addendum forthcoming. “Iz will barge in here in the morning, whether we want her to or not. I might not be ready to decide by then. Can we hide them? Obfuscate or glamour? I might be able to manage it, but I’ll need your help to confirm it’s working. You used so much to heal me, I hate to ask-”

Magnus silenced him with a finger to his lips. “Anything you need. Always.”

Morning brought a carefully constructed glamour and a series of interesting emails from Catarina who possibly got even less sleep than they did. Afternoon brought tables full of tomes and parchments and research of their own as the others were sent back to the Institute to handle matters there. Evening brought them to a secluded ravine, Jace and Magnus on watch as Alec stretched unused muscles and instincts for the first time.

Three weeks brought confidence in flight and in constructing quick glamours as needed. Four brought confessions to his sister and a slap on the arm when she admitted she knew something had to be up because he sucked at lying. It was followed quickly by tears when Magnus admitted he and Catarina had replenished their stores enough to restore her own wings should she so choose. Two months brought a similar reaction from Jace when he laid out a spell originally designed to regrow limbs, altered to fit their needs.

Nearly one year later, a greater demon attacked the Institute, raining down fire and brimstone from high above to avoid the blades and other weaponry from the Nephilim trapped within. All but four, that was. When the creature exploded into flames and ichor and four winged beings landed in the ensuing chaos, Magnus looked on in pride as a new-old age of Shadowhunters strode forth, decked out in black and gold and the silver of their blades. The avenging angels of old finding their place in the world once more.


End file.
